It happened again, yesterday. It went like this. The
occasion was the international premiere of the Dutch feature film Nadine (2007), which was opening the
Internationales Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg. In
Germany, they love talking about
film. So every screening was followed by a discussion with the makers, in
preparation for which the interviewer has quickly read the memoirs of Marcus
Aurelius – because these are mentioned in passing at some point in the film.
And the hastily counted forty grapes on the bunch lying in the fruit bowl on
the table – not only as a symbol of vanity and fertility, but also (and not by
chance) the precise age of the main character. The male chair of the discussion
(fifty-plus, single, no children) said, by way of an introduction, that a young
woman had approached him at breakfast and said she had felt embarrassed
watching the film. She thought it was a typical male fantasy by someone who has
come to the conclusion that he has no family.

If this text were a film, the previous paragraph would
be the title sequence. Facts, intriguing details, seemingly irrelevant trivia,
embarrassing details, associative images and cliff-hangers follow one another
in quick succession. It is a filmmaker’s trick. The entire film in a nutshell.
If this essay were to take the form of a film, every trick in the book could
justifiably be used to convince the viewer: borrowed images and contrasting
images, text, voice-over, music, editing. Film, after all, is a spatial/temporal
experience.It all has to happen then
and there, within those ninety minutes, in the darkened room. There is no time
to leaf back, re-read, put the meaning of the words to one side for a moment
and allow their sounds to resonate in your head.

It is here and now.

There is a woman driving through a sunny landscape in
an open-topped car, or into a tunnel, windscreen wipers working overtime – we
instantly know that the sun is a smile, the rain tears and the tunnel a
(re)birth. Town, country, traffic, suburbs, colours, sunglasses, lipstick,
suitcase on the roof rack, briefcase on the passenger seat. Inside of one
minute, we know everything about her.

And, as we can assume that the filmmakers take us
seriously, we can also justifiably assume that this is what is meant. That this
female protagonist is partly reduced to her properties. This is what she is. As
well as a few things we will find out about her during the next hour and a
half, which we will recognise – or not – in ourselves. And then all the things
a good actress will add – without us noticing – to give her character an air of
mystery. That she’s actually an international jewel thief, although this
romantic comedy is about a nursery school teacher and a successful record
producer. Oh no, how stereotypical. OK, how about a headstrong world traveller
and a Canadian guitarist? Or is that still too much of a romantic cliché? Do we
have to go for a female Prime Minister and her passionate love affair with a
corner shop owner – and they lived happily ever after – or is that just
Cinderella in drag? (If this were a film, these tumbling sentences would be the
impossible shot – an endless, rolling long take, a visual stream of
consciousness.)

Stop. Cut.

Let’s go back to
Mannheim.

No, let’s almost go back to
Mannheim.
Let’s just pause on the way to remind ourselves what Nadine is about.

Nadine is the story of a successful advertising woman who increasingly feels –
tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock – her biological clock catching up with her. She
is the one left behind when Bridget Jones and the girls from Sex and the City are all happily married
at last. She wants a baby so badly, she decides to steal one. What director
Erik de Bruyn is in fact saying is: here we have a character whose natural urge
to reproduce is so much stronger than all her social/cultural achievements.
Together with screenwriter Gwen Eckhaus, he based Nadine on a number of women in their social sphere.

The point here is not to state that there are, of
course, women who are not at all like Nadine; that there is surely more to it
than her inability – or plain bad luck – in trying to bond with the right man
as a father for her children (and, by the way, what a bunch of
good-for-nothings the men in Nadine are!);
neither is it about blaming a feminism-gone-mad that has alienated women from
their own nature during Operation Assimilation. Nor is it about the economic
usefulness of women working; or also seeing bringing up children as a form of
work.

What it’s all about is that Nadine – in the very first sentence spoken in the introduction by
the chair of the discussion – is characterised as a ‘male fantasy’, in the
reported speech of a woman immediately fictionalised by her absence. Granting
the man a convenient immunity for the rest of the discussion.

If there is one thing that is really not done, that is
looking at films without putting yourself on the line. Film is all about –
among other things – engaging the audience’s sympathy, empathy, antipathy; we
must be able, while watching, to laugh, cry, squirm; we must fall in love, say
goodbye, be led down new pathways, have old insights confirmed. Film sharpens
up thought through emotion. Film is: I look, therefore I am. If it is not, then
it is a senseless, dry intellectual exercise.

I am assuming that the anecdote told by the chair of
the discussion was based on a real event. But even if this is the case, it
still gives rise to more problems than it resolves. What, in this context, is a
‘male fantasy’? A fantasy, seen from the perspective of a man, and which is
shared by and recognisable to many other men? But does Nadine then reflect a male fantasy?

Nadine is about a woman who has a massive biological clock ticking in her head. My
impression was that De Bruyn and Eckhaus were taking their protagonist’s desire
for a baby pretty seriously. They tended to take a more ‘female’ perspective in
the film. Furthermore, they chose not to give the character they created everything
on a plate. She has quite a lot to deal with: if she hadn’t been so obsessed by
her career, she would have had time for children – after all, her colleagues
have managed to cope with work and pregnancy. She is finally, then, given a
chance of redemption: following her adventures, a good man is waiting for her,
as a reward. This seems to me more like a typical girls’ fantasy – the
celebrated Prince Charming.

The more I think about it, the more I am inclined to
believe that the anecdote about the woman at breakfast was a ‘typical male
fantasy’. Imagine for a moment that the chair of the discussion wasn’t sure
what to do with all that overly female longing for motherhood. I didn’t
describe him, in my introduction, like in a police report, as ‘fifty-plus,
single, no children’ for nothing. In this case, the ‘counter-shot’ by a woman
who doesn’t understand the film, or rejects it, is very convenient for him. It
allows him, as it were, to retain his own enlightened view.

What our
discussion chair didn’t know was that I had just had a meeting with his
director, who told me that Mr Chair had sent him an e-mail, not long after the
film had been selected, on a completely different topic, and which started with
the sentence: ‘As my unborn children will confirm …’. The Director (also
fifty-plus, married to a career woman, four children) had then asked me how old
I was and whether I had children, in reply to which I was able to play the
coquettish girl, whereupon he commented – something in the manner of the famous
Dutch football player Johan Cruijff – that it was only possible to understand
this film in the way you happen to understand this film. Men differently from
women, women with children differently from women who want children – although
he was not able to understand the latter, as we don’t ask ourselves whether we
do or do not want other things that are essential to the continued existence of
the human race, such as eating or sleeping. That’s what he said.

And, of course, he was right. About only being able to
see what we see. With a wish for a child or without. With your own prejudices,
advantages and disadvantages. Nevertheless, as a film critic, it is possible to
train the way you see – the elasticity of your view – at the weekly press
screenings, and then in the evenings with a stack of DVDs. Our Cruijffs are
called Orson Welles or Jean-Luc Godard. Have I already said that cinema lovers
are funny people? That, if they could, they would like nothing better than to
watch films all day long? It would be easy to think up more clichés about
cinema lovers than women, and they’d all be true.

Intervention by the narrator.

At this point in my argument, a lot of you are
probably bursting to enter into a discussion with the Director – but we are
talking about film here, so let’s leave the biological-Darwinian questions to
one side for now. What the Director did is to unintentionally touch on what has
become a very important point in what has become known as feminist film theory
– although feminist is a problematic term in an academic sense, as it is an
ideologically loaded term, like Marxist film theory or Lacanian film theory.

This is the simple question: is there a female way of
looking at film, and does this lead to a
fundamentally different conclusion about film, distinct from those made on the
basis of personal interests and sensibilities? Film critics should – no, must –
allow the latter two into their work, while at the same time neutralising them.
They must, in any event, be acutely aware of these, as film criticism can
never, ever even pretend – like science – to be objective; although it must
strive for a form of objectivity.This
is why it is vastly important that film critics at least ask themselves whether
they are looking as a man or as a woman, as a mother or as a childless person,
as a fan of horror films or romantic comedies or both – and whether this is
relevant. I happen to believe that this is, realistically, the maximum
achievable. If you want to really think about film, you must master not only
the art of objectifying, but also the logic of emotion and poetic justification.
But then again: how do you know that you are looking as a man or as a woman,
except through the accidental combination of circumstances that has made you
the one or the other?

Personally, I don’t spend much time worrying about
this, as it would get in the way of the filmic experience.

These were, however, issues examined in feminist film
theory, particularly in the 1980s. Attempts were made to analyse the female
gaze of the viewer and the male gaze of the filmmaker, as well as to describe
and explain the various roles and stereotypes within which women appeared in
films. Among the conclusions reached was that women watching films did not
necessarily identify with the generally passive female perspectives in a film,
but more often with the active, male roles.

As film is a distorting mirror of social grimaces, it
should come as no surprise that another conclusion reached was that the
position of women in film was not good. So something had to be done. Academe
became activism. Feminist theoreticians climbed onto the barricades. The result
was greater awareness of the subordinated position of women in film, and of female
filmmakers. And it helped. Feminist films emerged, as did normal films about
women; and more and more women started making films. But still not enough. As
shown by the number of films directed by a woman screening at a festival like
Mannheim – maybe three, in total. It’s a man’s game, little girl. Heavy cameras
and all that.

But does a woman who watches film, and who writes
about film, busy herself with such considerations? Does she want to do so? Must
she? I prefer to belie my gender and just watch film. I have been trained to
ignore all of my individual traits in the quest for the Holy Grail of film
analysis: personal objectivity. I have been drilled to identify with male
protagonists. To the extreme degree that I, like them, can be irritated by
their female antagonists: girls who want to tame them, princesses on beds that
are far too soft (but without a pea under the mattress), treacherous mothers
and – last but not least – whores. And saints. But then, film saints are always
fallen women in disguise.

What’s more: I don’t really like films that want to
think for me, as a wealthy Western woman. I like films that make me think. I
like to identify with the unexpected. To wander in strange film worlds.

Flashback.

This story actually begins before the beginning. So we
have to go further back in time. Godard said that’s OK. A film, he said, has a
beginning, a middle and an ending, but not necessarily in that order. So here
we go. Off to another film festival. Cannes. The films that premiere there can
confidently be said to set the agenda for the rest of the film season and,
owing to the slow arrival of films in Dutch cinemas, for a while longer here.
The selection made there has nothing to do with coincidence.

I was confused by the whole fuss surrounding Nadine in Mannheim, because I had
already been angered by a similar situation. At the Cannes Film Festival 2007,
I had decided to become a feminist. Brought up as I was by three generations of
strong women, for me emancipation was always so self-evident it was never
really an issue. But in Cannes, I saw a number of films that evoked a kind of
revulsion in me, which I could only express in terms of man/woman. With
hindsight, this could probably best be compared to the reaction by the woman at
breakfast in the hotel in Mannheim. I saw films about which I could say with
much greater conviction: Bah. A male wet dream.

I also considered them to be fascinating and important
films, because these can go together. But: Bah. It’s nice to be able to give
such a gut response every now and then.

I have seen thousands of films in which men behave
just as predictably as women, but that offered far more interesting
perspectives than emancipation. It’s just a fact that films work with
archetypes and stereotypes.

The immediate cause of my
brief flirtation with feminism was a film called Silent Light (Luz silenciosa,
2007), in which Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas tells a story of marital
infidelity within a Mennonite community in the north of Mexico. A great
starting point. To begin with, you have the ultimate isolated subculture.
Voilà! Here is your film laboratory.Mennonites are an extremely pacifist order who base their beliefs on the
teachings of Frisian Reformation theologian Menno Simons(1496-1561). Some 100,000 Mennonites live in
Mexico, in relatively autonomous areas with their own laws, schools, without
electricity and modern medical care and, most important of all, unified by
their own language, Plautdietsch, a medieval Germanic dialect related to Dutch.

In this, his third film, Reygadas (who studied the law
of war and worked for the Mexican diplomatic service before going on to make
films) is interested principally in the extreme pacifism of the Mennonites. How
do they resolve a forbidden love that ‘transgresses the laws of God and man’?
How can you remain forbearing while your heart is breaking? For the sake of
convenience, we have to assume the latter, as the director instructed his
amateur actors (real Mennonites, who pretty much play themselves) to show as
little emotion as possible in front of the camera. His choice of characters is
a traditional one: two women and one man. A ratio that is seldom reversed in a
film. In this film, it is striking because it is rather too ostentatiously
obscured by a dazzling aesthetic that is intended to free all events of value
judgements.

To make matters even more complicated, Reygadas chose
to make the two women in the main character Johan’s life (exhibit A: male
perspective) as good as interchangeable. They look alike. Blonde. Little-House-on-the-Prairie-dress.
Headscarf to keep their hair in place. Penetrating gaze. No, not penetrating –
anaesthetised. As if the religious peace that drives them also makes them
puppets of their own convictions. Blonde farmers in dungarees. The Netherlands
as shown in the Open Air Museum. But the Plautdietsch sounds like a made-up
secret language. Do you look at this film differently if you don’t speak the
language? Do you then pay attention to what is really being said?

Looking again at the press kit handed out to members
of the press on the occasion of such a world premiere, I suddenly wondered
whether there were really two women – although they were both listed in the
credits. But there was a photo of only one of them. The mistress. Or is the
other woman, the wife, the woman we only see from behind? Her face left in the
shadows. Does she (still) exist, now that her husband’s love has left her?

Love. Maybe that’s the only thing that matters in the
cinema. All the rest: war, voyages of discovery, crazy adventures and
irresistible laughter, are just distractions. And are also love. And film is
the only arena (with the exception of the kitchen floor) where the battle of
the sexes is fought – day in, day out – with ever newer, more inventive weapons
(but never decided).

Reygadas is the kind of filmmaker that makes his shots
so long that the viewer has oceans of time to reflect while watching. He gives
us few images, few handles, so everything can be just as rich and important as
you yourself choose. Film-phenomenological explorations through fields of grain
and rain showers, with only the sun rising and setting in the eternal distance.
Shards of meaning.

Ha! A tasty treat for the film critics. Now they can
really let go for once, without having the message dictated to them by
overproduced films. Messages belong on your mobile phone.

Once I get into the flow of writing like this, it’s difficult
to be cross with Reygadas for long. His film still challenges me to think. Why
is Johan the only character in the film who is allowed to take action? Why do
both women simply wait for his decision? A decision that is no decision, as
divorce is out of the question. No one judges, no one acts. I suspect that
Reygadas is giving us a sketch of heaven. I feel lost in hell.

And, by the way: do the characters really accept their
fate? Reygadas saves himself – and them – from the impasse by having one of the
two women die and getting the other one to bring her back to life. Thanks to
this amazing deus ex machina – which
would have brought a blush even to accustomed ancient Greek cheeks – a kind of
resolution is achieved. A sacrifice and a miracle restore the natural balance.
All’s well that ends well.

But now, my blood is boiling again. Reygadas’ film is
probably both feminist (in the sense that he makes us think about the
emancipated or otherwise position of the two women) and misogynist. He depicts the
women as rag dolls without free will who – and here is the wet dream part –
have more pity for one another than for themselves, and therefore forgive
Johan. That’s nice, isn’t it? The man gets to commit adultery and then –
without taking the emotions of the women into account for a moment – to even
profit from it as, thanks to the filmmaker, the two women are big enough to
forgive one another. How many films are made in which a woman gets what she
wants? And in which, furthermore, no miraculous power has to be invoked to
justify it all? Grrr. We simply can’t go on like this. Something has to be
done. Should I, like my film sisters in the ‘80s, take to the streets? And
then?

The film is perfect. The content repulsive. I don’t mind
identifying with Jennifer Aniston, if I have to. Or with some other giggling
starlet. But this? These women are not women. They are not even human – they
are docile subjects. The Mennonites have an extreme belief in predestination.
So the miracle, the deus ex machina,
is only necessary to make Johan realise something, and give the audience a
little emotional kick after two and a half hours of restraint. Because, miracle
or no miracle, in a predestined world, what must happen will happen. Yes, there
are parallels between the Filmmaker and God.

Which leaves me with these women. Did I become a
feminist because I empathised with their fate? Was I already a feminist because
I believe that it is the job of a critic not only to describe and assess films,
but also to explain them and reveal their hidden assumptions? And oh boy! How
often does this involve how men and women deal with one another.

But Silent Light did more. It is one of those rare films that actually prompts action. There are
moments when you simply want to jump up out of your seat and drag the
characters down from the screen and say to them: come with me, leave that man
to stew in his own juice – you deserve better, find a job, stand up for
yourself! Above all, the last part: do it yourself. The passivity of the women
in this film serves no other purpose than to soothe the man’s conscience. At
the end of the day, the only question the film asks is whether it is possible
to resolve a conflict without acting. The only answer the film gives to this
question is: yes, if you just stay true to yourself. The conclusion drawn is
ultimately that Johan will continue to live happily ever after with his two
women. Don’t get me wrong: even if he lives with three women, or four, that
doesn’t bother me. The point is that the female characters in this film have
lost their freedom of action. And that is going too far.

I experience similar emotions when seeing little
Korean girls being pursued by scary monsters, war wounds bleeding so severely
that they are just begging to be dressed, and above all in the case of some
long-anticipated kindred spirit who always neglect to kiss the heroine – and
when they finally do clumsily embrace her, o help! I instantly forget all my
feminism, my environmental consciousness and my political commitment. My heart
is still beating faster now.

That has nothing to do with being a woman, with
feminism, with female thinking. That’s just your normal (or ‘normal’) seduction
and power of film.

Once upon a time there was a man – in fact, he was the
editor-in-chief of a serious English film magazine – who thought that women
could be more easily enchanted in this way than men, because women have learned
throughout their lives to empathise with the feelings of others. He was,
therefore, not at all surprised at the relatively large number of women working
as professional film critics in the Netherlands. The British, really.

Then there was someone else who said that a love of
film is a boy’s thing. It’s got to do with one-upmanship and making lists and
collecting things.

And how does she think about it now?

She’s back from Suffragette City.

And now.

Now she’s just a woman again.

And I’m just me.

This essay
was originally published in Manon Duintjer (ed.), Zij denk
dus zij bestaat. Over vrouwen, mannen en denken (She Thinks, Therefore She Is: On Women, Men and Thought, AMBO, 2008),
a collection of texts by female Dutch philosophers. Translated from the Dutch
by Mark Baker.